This incredible patchwork quilt of solar images shows the range of wavelengths that scientists use when investigating our Sun.

The collage made from pictures taken by from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows how looking at the Sun in different wavelengths highlights various aspects of its surface and atmosphere.

While taking a photo of the Sun with a standard camera will simply show its familiar yellowish, featureless disk, the star actually emits light in all colours.

Scroll down for interactive graphic explaining each colour

Patchwork: This collage of solar images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows how observations of the sun in different wavelengths highlights different aspects of the sun's surface and atmosphere. The collage also includes images from other SDO instruments that display magnetic and Doppler information

So scientists use specialised instruments, either in ground-based telescopes or space-based ones like the SDO, to observe light far beyond the limited ranges we can see with the naked eye.

These different wavelengths convey information about different components of the sun's surface and atmosphere, so scientists use them to paint a full picture of our constantly changing and varying star.

Scientists describe the wavelengths using units of measurement known as Angstroms, which are equivalent to one ten-billionth of a metre.

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The familiar yellow-green light of 5,500 Angstroms, for example, generally emanates from material of about 5,700 degrees C (10,000 degrees F), which represents the surface of the Sun.

Extreme ultraviolet light of 94 Angstroms, on the other hand, comes from atoms that are about 6.3million degrees C (11million degrees F).

That makes it a good wavelength for looking at solar flares, which can reach such searing temperatures.

By examining pictures of the sun in a variety of wavelengths – as is done through such telescopes as Nasa's SDO, its Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and the ESA/Nasa Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) - scientists can track how particles and heat move through the sun's atmosphere.

WAVELENGTHS VISIBLE TO THE SDO

From the sun's surface on out, the wavelengths SDO observes, measured in Angstroms, are:

4500: Showing the sun's surface or photosphere.

1700: Shows surface of the sun, as well as a layer of the sun's atmosphere called the chromosphere, which lies just above the photosphere and is where the temperature begins rising.

1600: Shows a mixture between the upper photosphere and what's called the transition region, a region between the chromosphere and the upper most layer of the sun's atmosphere called the corona. The transition region is where the temperature rapidly rises.

304: This light is emitted from the chromosphere and transition region.

171: This wavelength shows the sun's atmosphere, or corona, when it's quiet. It also shows giant magnetic arcs known as coronal loops.

193: Shows a slightly hotter region of the corona, and also the much hotter material of a solar flare.

335: This wavelength also shows hotter, magnetically active regions in the corona.

94: This highlights regions of the corona during a solar flare.

131: The hottest material in a flare.

We see the visible spectrum of light simply because the sun is made up of a hot gas – heat produces light just as it does in an incandescent light bulb.

But when it comes to the shorter wavelengths, the sun sends out extreme UV light and x-rays because it is filled with many kinds of atoms, each giving off light of a certain wavelength when they reach a certain temperature.

Not only does the sun contain many different atoms – helium, hydrogen, iron, for example - but also different kinds of each atom with different electrical charges, known as ions.

Each ion can emit light at specific wavelengths when it reaches a particular temperature. Scientists have cataloged which atoms produce which wavelengths since the early 1900s, and the associations are well documented in lists that can take up hundreds of pages.

Solar telescopes make use of this wavelength information in two ways. Instruments that produce conventional images of the sun focus exclusively on light around one particular wavelength, sometimes not one that is visible to the naked eye.

Each wavelength is largely based on a single, or perhaps two types of ions – though slightly longer and shorter wavelengths produced by other ions are also invariably part of the picture.

Each wavelength was chosen to highlight a particular part of the sun's atmosphere.

Other kinds of instruments, known as spectrometers, observe many wavelengths of light simultaneously and can measure how much of each wavelength of light is present.

This helps create a composite understanding of what temperature ranges are exhibited in the material around the sun. But spectrographs don't look like a typical picture, but instead are graphs that categorise the amount of each kind of light.

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The astonishing 'patchwork quilt' image shows our Sun in all its various colours